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More than 2 million community college students in the United States are parents of children under 18. Student parents benefit from large earnings gains once earning their degree; community colleges can support their graduation by providing services to help balance family and school responsibilities.

More than 2 million community college students in the United States are parents of children under 18. Seventy percent of these parents are mothers, and many of these mothers are women of color.

The majority of student parents live in or near poverty, making them especially likely to benefit from the earning gains experienced by college graduates. These benefits are especially important for single mother students, who make up over half of all student mothers. New researchfrom the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) finds that, on average, single mothers with AA degrees who work full-time, year-round, earn $8,000 more each year, and over $330,000 more over their lifetimes, than they would have with only a high school diploma. These increased earnings lead to a substantial return to single mothers’ investment in community college: for every $1 a single mother graduate spends on earning an associate degree, her family gets back $16.45.

Despite the real benefits associated with college attainment, only 28 percent of first-time, beginning student parents in community college graduate with a degree or certificate within six years of enrollment.

Student parents face several challenges that make it hard for them to graduate. They face numerous demands on their time, which include caring for children and often, holding a job, in addition to attending classes and completing coursework. Two-thirds of student parents in community college work, which research has shown can disrupt degree completion. Caregiving takes up substantial time as well, with roughly a quarter of women in community college reporting that they spend 30 hours or more each week providing care to dependents, and more than four in ten who live with dependents saying that their care obligations are likely to cause them to drop out of school. Affordable, reliable child care is essential to helping student parents balance these time demands, but quality care can be expensive, and the number of community colleges with on-campus child care has declined as the number of student parents in community college has increased.

What can community colleges do to help their student parents persist and graduate?

1)Establish campus programs and collaborate with community service providers to give student parents access to resources they need to stay in school.

2)Partner with the local early care and education community to help student parents find child care that meets their needs.

At Lane Community College in Oregon, student parents can find child care through a free referral service provided on-campus. Quality Care Connections helps parents identify child care options, in addition to providing a variety of free parenting supports and resources for free over thephone, through its statewide 211 Child Care Referral phone line,online, and in-person on campus.

Monroe Community College (MCC) in New York collects data on parent status through a survey conducted every semester during course registration. MCC matches those data with data from its campus child care center, allowing for a recent IWPR analysis, which found that use of the center increased MCC student parents’ likelihood of returning to school the following year. The analysis also found that using the center more than tripled student parents’ chances of on-time graduation.

4) Promote federal, state, and local strategies to improve the availability of affordable child care.

Community college leaders can share information with policymakers on students’ need for child care and their experiences with programs like the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program, the only source of federal funding that supports low-income college students’ access to child care. They can also provide expert guidance to policymakers on how removing work requirements and other restrictions would expand students’ access to child care assistance, which can help low-income parents pay for child care while pursuing postsecondary education.

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On August 7, IWPR President and CEO Heidi Hartmann submitted a comment to the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the proposal to include an untested citizenship question on the 2020 Census:

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) writes to express its concern over proposed changes to the 2020 Census. IWPR conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings to address the needs of women, promote public dialog, and strengthen families, communities, and societies.

IWPR relies on accurate and timely data from the federal statistical agencies, including the Census Bureau, for research across our program areas. A comprehensive, accurate decennial Census provides the primary source of information on the U.S. population and is the foundation on which many other data are based for gauging coverage, constructing population weights, and providing other inputs across the federal statistical system. As a result, we share a profound commitment with other census stakeholders to ensuring full public participation in the decennial Census. We not only rely directly on the decennial Census itself in our work, but we also rely on all the other federal and private data systems that use the decennial Census to ensure the accuracy of their data collection, sampling frames, population weights, and so on.

We are concerned that including an untested citizenship question on the 2020 Census will discourage participation in the decennial Census—especially among vulnerable, hard-to-count populations. Asking households to enumerate their members by an untested question designed to collect citizenship status is very likely to be perceived as a risk by many respondents, even those in the U.S. with proper visas/documentation, and will certainly increase the burden of response, suppress response rates, and reduce overall data quality. These negative outcomes are more likely to occur in urban areas that attract a greater number of single mothers (who give birth to majority of first-time births), immigrants, and racial minorities, and other vulnerable minorities, for example adherents of the muslin religions. The impact will be quite large when one considers that many families have members of different citizenship statuses.

Access to campus child care is a key factor in determining if single mothers in college will graduate within six years, according to the latest in a series of reports released Wednesday by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Just 8 percent of single mothers who enroll in college graduate with an associate or bachelor’s degree within six years, compared to 49 percent of women students who are not mothers, stated the report, “Investing in Single Mothers’ Higher Education: Costs and Benefits to Individuals, Families, and Society.” In addition, the vast majority, 89 percent, of single student mothers have low incomes and no money of their own or from their families to cover college expenses.

Citing: Investing in Single Mothers’ Higher Education: Costs and Benefits to Individuals, Families, and Society by Barbara Gault, Jessica Milli, and Lindsey Reichlin Cruse at Institute for Women’s Policy Research, June 2018

There have been a lot of headlines about the gender wage gap among full-time wage and salary workers. Researchers have found that pay disparities persist due to a combination of women working in lower-paid occupations, taking time off to have kids and discrimination. But what about the world of online platforms, like Lyft and Instacart, where wages are often set equally for a given task and the customer doesn’t see the gender of the worker before the job is booked? Turns out there’s a gender wage gap there, too. A study released last week by economists from Stanford University using data from more than a million Uber drivers uncovered a 7% hourly earnings gap between men and women on the ride-sharing platform.

Citing: The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from Over A Million Rideshare Drivers by Cody Cook, Rebecca Diamond, Jonathan Hall, John A. List, and Paul Oyer at National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2018

Men make more than women in their side hustles. Women Uber drivers earn 93 cents on the dollar compared to men, according to a study distributed Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “The uniqueness of our data — knowing exactly the production and compensation functions — permits us to completely unpack the underlying determinants of the gender earnings gap,” the researchers wrote. The authors found that the gender gap is caused by three factors: How long they’ve been driving on the platform, preferences over where/when to work and driving speed. The authors include economists from the Graduate School of Business and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University, and Jonathan Hall, chief economist and director of public policy at Uber.

Citing: The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from Over A Million Rideshare Drivers by Cody Cook, Rebecca Diamond, Jonathan Hall, John A. List, and Paul Oyer at National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2018

The U.S. Census provides important information on communities, but it won’t be counting the number of LGBTQ people in 2020 – and that’s a problem, according to a new report. The Census Bureau will count same-sex marriages, as it has in the past. But the Bureau rescinded a question that would have asked people about their sexual orientation and gender identity. Matthew Caruchet, author of the Economic Opportunity Institute report, said the question could have provided important information on an area with little research: the LGBT pay gap. He compared this issue to the women’s pay gap, which can draw on decades of census data.

What gig economy? Fewer working as freelancers, contractors than believed

By Paul Davidson | | 6.7.2018

So you think an ever-growing share of American workers are Uber drivers or freelancers whose offices are tables at Starbucks? Think again. A Labor Department report Thursday casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that the workforce is shifting from traditional full-time employees to independent contractors, temporary workers and other contingent laborers. About 16 million Americans, or 10.4% of the workforce, were contingent workers or had other alternative work arrangements in May 2017, according to the report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s surprisingly below the 10.9% of the workers in that category in 2005.

When people of color ask for raises, they’re a lot less likely than white workers to get the salary bump they request, according to a new study by PayScale, a firm that analyzes compensation data. Women of color, a group that includes African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and other non-white people, are 19 percent less likely than white men to get the raise they ask for, according to the survey of about 160,000 respondents. Non-white men were 25 percent more likely to be turned down for a salary increase. “Everyone’s asking, but they’re getting different answers,” said Lydia Frank, vice president of content strategy at PayScale. “I think with the current climate in this country and the systemic racism that we’ve seen in other areas, I don’t think it’s terribly surprising.”

While ridehail driving and other male-dominated sectors have been at the forefront in conversations about the future of work, the working lives of domestic workers like housecleaners and nannies usually aren’t included. By bringing these three types of platforms and workers together, this report complicates simple narratives about technology’s impact on labor markets and highlights the convergent and divergent challenges workers face when using labor platforms to find and carry out their work. Interviewees reported increased financial and personal risk due to platform policy and design loopholes. For example, workers with marginalized identities (e.g. people of color and undocumented workers; largely women) report inequitable conditions that arise from common features such as rating systems.

After decades of convergence, the gender gap in employment outcomes has recently plateaued in many rich countries, despite the fact that women have increased their investment in human capital over this period. We propose a hypothesis to reconcile these two trends: that when they are making key human capital decisions, women in modern cohorts underestimate the impact of motherhood on their future labor supply. Using an event-study framework, we show substantial and persistent employment effects of motherhood in U.K. and U.S. data. We then provide evidence that women do not anticipate these effects. Upon becoming parents, women (and especially more educated women) adopt more negative views toward female employment (e.g., they are more likely to say that women working hurts family life), suggesting that motherhood serves as an information shock to their beliefs. Women on average (and, again, more educated women in particular) report that parenthood is harder than they expected. We then look at longer horizons—are young women’s expectations about future labor supply correct when they make their key educational decisions?

Gender pay equity is a significant issue in media production — in front of and behind the camera, and above and below the line. Existing and historical gender-based job segregation, gender stereotyping, and differential negotiating power can lead to wide differences in pay for individuals who play similar roles or work at similar levels – due to different scale rates, different negotiated rates, or both. In light of these concerns, Local 871 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, its Territories and Canada (IATSE) retained Working IDEAL to perform an in-depth assessment of gender bias in compensation for four female-dominated Local 871 crafts involved in film, television and other media production: Script Supervisors, Production Coordinators, Assistant Production Coordinators and Art Department Coordinators.

The report analyses the ways in which unpaid care work is recognized and organized, the extent and quality of care jobs and their impact on the well-being of individuals and society. A key focus of this report is the persistent gender inequalities in households and the labour market, which are inextricably linked with care work. These gender inequalities must be overcome to make care work decent and to ensure a future of decent work for both women and men. The report contains a wealth of original data drawn from over 90 countries and details transformative policy measures in five main areas: care, macroeconomics, labour, social protection and migration. It also presents projections on the potential for decent care job creation offered by remedying current care work deficits and meeting the related targets of the Sustainable Development Goals.

A new report, released by Jobs With Justice Education Fund and the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First, identifies the large corporations that have been most involved in wage and hour collective action lawsuits. Grand Theft Paycheck: The Large Corporations Shortchanging Their Workers’ Wages finds wage theft is pervasive in big business. A detailed examination of court records reveals that hundreds of corporations have paid out billions of dollars to resolve wage theft lawsuits, and many corporations are repeat offenders. Walmart has paid the most in settlements, but the list of the most-penalized employers also includes Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other large banks and insurance companies as well as major technology and healthcare corporations.

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As researchers, data analysts, and social scientists, we often reach for facts and reliable information to light our way forward through difficult challenges. Research documents the profound and often irreparable harm caused by childhood trauma, such as separating children from their parents. Evidence also shows us the great economic and social power of women and their families—this power has and can continue to change policy for the betterment of all people.

Research can provide the stable ground where evidence-based decision-making can take root. Over the past few days and weeks, as we have witnessed the humanitarian crisis unfold at the southern U.S. border, a truth that transcends data or fact has emerged: we must do more to ensure that U.S. policies reflect the morality, empathy, and compassion that characterize a just society.

At this pivotal moment in our nation’s history, IWPR stands together with the many researchers and organizations speaking out on behalf of the human rights, health, and well-being of children and families.

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June 10, 2018, marks the 55th anniversary of passage of the Equal Pay Act. On that day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the act that, in his words, “prohibits the arbitrary discrimination against women in the payment of wages.”

The Equal Pay Act requires that men and women be given equal pay for equal work in the same establishment. The jobs need not be identical, but they must be substantially equal. It is job content, not job titles, that determines whether jobs are substantially equal. Specifically, the EPA provides that employers may not pay unequal wages to men and women who perform jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility, and that are performed under similar working conditions.

The EPA also stipulates that when employers are required to correct a discriminatory difference in pay, they cannot reduce a higher-earner’s wages; instead, they must increase the lower-earner’s wages. Further, the EPA makes it illegal to retaliate against anyone for opposing practices that discriminate based on wages, filing a charge of discrimination, or participating in any way in an EPA investigation.

What have we gained since the Equal Pay Act?

When the EPA was passed, women earned 58.9 percent of what men earned, and the percentage was on a downward trend. Over the past fifty-five years, the gender pay gap has narrowed. In 2016, female full-time, year-round workers earned 80.5 percentof what men earned.

Earlier this year, a federal appeals court ruled that the EPA prohibits employers from paying women less than men based on women’s salary histories, which may help close the gender pay gap even further.

What progress do we still have to make on pay equality?

Despite these advances, there is still far to go. Even though the EPA makes it illegal to pay women less than men, according to IWPR research, women won’t reach parity until 2059 if trends over the past 30 years continue. The wait will be even longer for women of color: Black women won’t have equal pay until 2124, and Hispanic women won’t have equal pay until 2233.

What’s more, while the EPA focuses on eliminating pay inequality within “substantially equal” jobs, the profound gender segregation of the US labor market means that women and men tend to work in different occupations–and the jobs men tend to do pay much more. IWPR analyses of women in low-wage and middle-skill jobs has shown that many female-dominated jobs require similar skills and education to male-dominated jobs, yet pay much less. Research has found that more than half of the gender wage gap is due to this occupational and industry segregation.

As IWPR’s Ariane Hegewisch has said, “Perhaps the most important first step” in tackling gender inequality in these lower-wage jobs “is deciding that women’s work is valuable, and critical to the economy.” Concrete steps toward this recognition could include raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing paid sick days and family leave, ensuring fair scheduling, tackling wage theft and the underpayment of overtime rates, and increasing public subsidies for child care and elder care.

How have states and cities strengthened pay equality?

Under the EPA, the onus of proving wage discrimination rests on the worker. State and local efforts have sought to reverse this burden by requiring employers to prove that differences in pay are based on factors other than gender, such as legislation recently passed in New Jersey. Other local actions have focused on improving pay transparency, such as legislation in Washington, and banning employers from asking about salary history in the hiring process, such as legislation and executive orders in Massachusetts, New York City, and Chicago, among others.

IWPR has been researching the gender wage gap and occupational segregation since its founding in 1987. Since then, the Institute has changed the conversation on women’s pay and provided policymakers, journalists, and advocates the data they need to better inform the debate on women’s economic status.

Want to learn even more about the gender wage gap? Head to IWPR’s “Pay Equity & Discrimination” page. Also be sure to check out IWPR’s Status of Women in the States’ “Employment & Earnings” page to see how your state measures up on women’s pay.

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The number of single mothers in college has grown tremendously over the past decade. In the 2011-12 academic year alone, nearly 1.3 million single mothers were enrolled in two- and four-year institutions. But only 8 percent of single mothers who enroll in college graduate with a degree.

In a recently-released analysis, IWPR found that the economic returns to single mothers’ investment in a college education are enormous—for them and for society. Single mother graduates of two- and four-year colleges have lower poverty rates and higher annual and lifetime earnings than single mothers who do not attain college degrees. This means huge earnings gains for them and their families, as well as for society at large through increased tax contributions and reduced receipt of public benefits.

For Single Mothers:

College Cuts Poverty

With each additional level of education, single mothers’ likelihood of living in poverty declines by an average of 32 percent. IWPR estimates that for single mothers who were enrolled in the 2011-12 academic year, over 21,000 would have left poverty after earning an associate degree and over 10,500 would have left poverty after earning a bachelor’s degree.

College Increases Earnings

Single mothers with associate degrees who work full-time, year-round earn $8,000 more than those with only high school degrees. Single mothers with bachelor’s degrees who work the same amount earn $18,500, or 62 percent, more.

These increases add up: over a lifetime, single mother graduates with associate degrees who work full-time, year-round earn nearly $329,500 more, and single mother graduates with bachelor’s degrees earn over $610,300 more, than those with only a high school diploma.

These increased lifetime earnings lead to substantial returns to single mother graduates from their own investments in two- and four-year degree programs. For every dollar a single mother graduate spends on an associate degree, her family gets back $16.45 in increased earnings; for a bachelor’s degree, each dollar invested brings her family a return of $8.50.

According to student mothers interviewed by IWPR, the desire to ensure their families’ future success played a key role in their decisions to attend college. One single mother student said:

“I wanted to get a bachelor’s degree and be stable and be able to provide my son with a better home, with a better future…. I couldn’t do that with just a high school diploma.”

Another said:

“I just wanted to get out of that cycle [of poverty], and I knew that I had to be a positive role model for my children so that they wouldn’t fall into that cycle and they know that, okay, it’s great that you graduate from high school, but there’s more work to be done.”

For Society:

Reduced Poverty Saves on Public Benefit Spending

The benefits of degree attainment extend beyond single mothers and their families. Each single mother graduate saves society over $1,800 in public benefit spending for herself and her family over a four-year period compared with those who do not have college degrees. For single mothers enrolled in the 2011-12 academic year, IWPR estimates this totaled $309 million over four years following degree attainment.

Higher Earnings Increase Tax Contributions

On average, each single mother with an associate degree contributes over $36,200 more in taxes over her lifetime than a single mother with only a high school diploma, and each single mother with a bachelor’s degree contributes over $84,200 more. For single mother graduates enrolled in the 2011-12 academic year, their total lifetime tax contributions are estimated at $7.8 billion more than if they had only earned high school degrees.

Investments that Help Single Mothers Graduate Pay Off

Investment in services that would help single mothers graduate—such as child care, case management, and financial aid—would be more than compensated for by these increases in taxes and reductions in public benefit spending. Investment in these services for a single mother pursuing a bachelor’s degree would cost an estimated $55,800 for the time that she was enrolled in college—much less than the $86,000 she would contribute in taxes and public benefit savings over her lifetime. An investment in these services for a single mother who graduates with an associate degree would cost an estimated $37,600, which would be offset by the $38,100 that she would contribute.

Without sufficient supports in place, single mothers face a range of obstacles to achieving college success. For many, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. One single mother shared how hard it was to find time to complete schoolwork and care for her family:

“11 o’clock is when I start doing my homeworkuntil like four in the morning and then I have to wake up again at six in the morning.”

Another described the challenge of balancing school, family, and finances for both:

“It’s just like Jenga: you take one piece out and it all falls down.”

Lack of access to child care often makes the tower tumble:

“I felt like if I don’t have child care, I’m not going to be able to obtain my degree and I’m going to stay poor and I’m going to be living in the projects the rest of my life.”

Investing in services that can help single student mothers persist in college can improve their college completion, benefit them and their families, and contribute to a stronger economy. As IWPR Vice President and Executive Director Barbara Gaulthas said, “Short-term investments in single mothers’ college success pay off enormously, and across multiple generations, after they graduate.”

Read even more about why we should invest in single mothers’ higher education in IWPR’s full analysis.

Every year around this time—when commencement season and Mother’s Day collide—moms across the country are praised for their grit and resolve. It’s a tough job for just about anyone. But for 2.1 million single mothers, according to the latest federal data, the normal difficulties are compounded by the stresses of going to college. For these moms, there may not be enough hours in the day to do all the tasks they have to do at home while still going to college. A new report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a think tank and advocacy group for advancing women’s status, breaks down the data on the amount of time single mothers in college are spending on their obligations outside of the classroom compared with women students without children. The analysis, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, is instructive—and eye-opening.

Citing: Time Demands of Single Mother College Students and the Role of Child Care in their Postsecondary Success by Lindsey Reichlin Cruse, Barbara Gault, and Joo Yeoun Suh at Institute for Women’s Policy Research and Mary Ann DeMario of Monroe Community College, May 2018

The good news on Equal Pay Day: In a country where women earn 82 cents on the dollar compared to men, some women do actually out-earn their male peers. The bad news: It only happens in two industries. There are only two occupations where women’s median earnings are slightly higher than men’s, while there are 107 occupations in which women’s median earnings were 95% or less than men’s for the same jobs. Women working as “dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers” and “wholesale and retail buyers, except farm products” slightly out-earned men. Overall, women’s median earnings are lower than men’s in nearly all occupations. That’s according to new research released this week by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a nonprofit think tank. Last year, the median gender pay gap was 81.8%, reflecting median weekly earnings of $770 for all female full-time workers and $941 per week for men.

Cory Booker’s new big idea: guaranteeing jobs for everyone who wants one

By Dylan Matthew | | 4.20.2018

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has a big idea: give 15 local areas federal money so they can guarantee all their residents a job. The Federal Jobs Guarantee Development Act, announced by Booker on Friday, would establish a three-year pilot program in which the Department of Labor would select up to 15 local areas (defined in the bill as any political subdivision of a state, like a city or a county, or a group of cities and counties) and offer that area funding so that every adult living there is guaranteed a job paying at least $15 an hour (or the prevailing wage for the job in question, whichever’s higher) and offering paid family/sick leave and health benefits.

In 83 Million Eviction Records, a Sweeping and Intimate New Look at Housing in America

By Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui | | 4.7.2018

Before the first hearings on the morning docket, the line starts to clog the lobby of the John Marshall Courthouse. No cellphones are allowed inside, but many of the people who’ve been summoned don’t learn that until they arrive. “Put it in your car,” the sheriff’s deputies suggest at the metal detector. That advice is no help to renters who have come by bus. To make it inside, some tuck their phones in the bushes nearby. This courthouse handles every eviction in Richmond, a city with one of the highest eviction rates in the country, according to new data covering dozens of states and compiled by a team led by the Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond. Two years ago, Mr. Desmond turned eviction into a national topic of conversation with “Evicted,” a book that chronicled how poor families who lost their homes in Milwaukee sank ever deeper into poverty.

The hidden crisis on college campuses: Many students don’t have enough to eat

By Caitlin Dewey | | 4.3.2018

Caleb Torres lost seven pounds his freshman year of college — and not because he didn’t like the food in the dining hall. A first-generation college student, barely covering tuition, Torres ran out of grocery money halfway through the year and began skipping meals as a result. He’d stretch a can of SpaghettiOs over an entire day. Or he’d scout George Washington University campus for events that promised free lunch or snacks. Torres told no one what he was going through, least of all his single mom. “She had enough things to worry about,” he said. Now a senior and living off-campus, in a housing situation that supplies most of his meals,Torres is finally talking about his experience with the hunger problem on America’s college campuses: a quiet, insidious epidemic that researchers say threatens millions of students every year.

Citing: Still Hungry and Homeless in College by Sara Goldrick-Rab, Jeb Richardson, Joel Schneider, Anthony Hernandez, and Clare Cady at Wisconsin Hope Lab, April 2018

In more than half the world’s economies, policy makers have yet to take an obvious step to close the difference between men’s and women’s earnings: allowing women to work the same jobs as men. “I don’t understand why, in 2018, there’s 104 countries that have job restrictions on women,” said Sarah Iqbal, the program manager for the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law project, which produces an annual report on the legal environment for women in 189 economies. In 18 economies husbands can legally prevent their wives from working at all. And in many nations, women are barred from taking jobs in many high-wage sectors, including manufacturing, contributing to very different economic outcomes for men and women.

A recent proposal would allow new parents to trade future Social Security benefits for a few months of paid leave. Projections from the Dynamic Simulation of Income Model (DYNASIM) show that providing a progressive, 12-week leave benefit averaging about half pay without raising taxes would require raising the Social Security full retirement age for leave program participants about 25 weeks. This increase would permanently reduce participants’ monthly Social Security retirement benefits about 3 percent. The proposed program would raise Social Security’s annual costs, net of benefit offsets, about 1 percent, worsening the program’s financing shortfall.

While the U.S. economy has shown signs of recovery since the Great Recession, inequality among America’s 33 million working families has increased. The unemployment rate has fallen from a post-recession high of 9.6 percent in 2010 to 4.4 percent in 2017—the lowest level since 2000. However, gains at the lower end of the income spectrum have been slower than those at the top. The number of working families with income below 200 percent of the poverty level—termed low-income—fell slightly between 2015 and 2016 (from 10.3 million to 9.9 million). But despite recent improvements, there are more low-income working families today than there were at the onset of the recession in 2007 (9.5 million). Today, three in 10 working families in the United States may not have enough money to meet basic needs.

One-in-four parents living with a child in the United States today are unmarried. Driven by declines in marriage overall, as well as increases in births outside of marriage, this marks a dramatic change from a half-century ago, when fewer than one-in-ten parents living with their children were unmarried (7%). At the same time, the profile of unmarried parents has shifted markedly, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Solo mothers – those who are raising at least one child with no spouse or partner in the home – no longer dominate the ranks of unmarried parents as they once did. In 1968, 88% of unmarried parents fell into this category. By 1997 that share had dropped to 68%, and in 2017 the share of unmarried parents who were solo mothers declined to 53%. These declines in solo mothers have been entirely offset by increases in cohabiting parents: Now 35% of all unmarried parents are living with a partner. Meanwhile, the share of unmarried parents who are solo fathers has held steady at 12%.

In the last couple of years, workers and legislators have taken some big steps to push organizations to rectify the gender pay gap. For example, salary history bans have expanded across the U.S., with the goal of making sure organizations do not perpetuate the gender pay gap. The UK passed a law in 2017 which forces companies with more than 250 employees in the region to report on pay disparity between their male and female employees. In France, companies with more than 50 employees are now required to install software directly connected to their payroll systems to monitor unjustified pay gap; if a company fails to erase a pay gap detected by the software over three years, they could face a penalty. In the U.S., female employees from Google sued their previous employer for gender-based pay disparity. More recently, Starbucks claims it has achieved pay equity in the U.S.

Recent allegations against prominent men in entertainment, politics, the media and other industries have sparked increased attention to the issue of sexual harassment and assault, in turn raising questions about the treatment of the accused and the accusers and what lies ahead for men and women in the workplace. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that, when it comes to sexual harassment in the workplace, more Americans think men getting away with it and female accusers not being believed are major problems than say the same about employers firing men before finding out all the facts or women making false accusations. And while these attitudes differ somewhat by gender, they vary most dramatically between Democrats and Republicans.